McDonald's Briefly Closes US Offices Ahead of Layoffs
The international fast-food company closed its U.S. offices and some international ones "out of respect," and to "provide dignity, confidentiality, and comfort to our colleagues," said an anonymous Reuters source who is familiar with the company and was not authorized to speak to the media.
According to the source, McDonald's will have more employees beginning new roles or receiving promotions this week than being laid off. The company has more than 150,000 employees globally, with about 70% based outside of the United States.
The layoffs do not include the more than 2 million workers in franchised McDonald's restaurants around the world.
Several tech-industry companies, including Amazon, Meta, Twitter and Microsoft have announced layoffs in recent months too. McDonald's competitor Wendy's also announced restructuring and possible corporate layoffs in January.
At the start of 2023, McDonald's warned employees that layoffs were coming as it reorganized the company to increase efficiency and set April 3 as the date by which they would share more details with employees.
"We have a clear opportunity ahead of us to get faster and more effective at solving problems for our customers and people, and to globally scale our successful market innovations at speed," the company said in a memo to workers, reported by The Associated Press.
The Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald's declined to comment on how many employees would be affected by the layoffs, but the Reuters source said the number will tally in the hundreds.
Some information from this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.